Bird Feeders Quotes

Small birds throw seeds out of the feeder; large birds pick them up off the ground, but the squirrels try to muscle in.

If I'd let you go and I'd gotten caught, my head would currently be decorating a tree somewhere, done up like an extremely morbid bird feeder...Here we go. And here's the moment where the rules fly out the window for all of us.

Many people would have to hang by their teeth from a frayed cord suspended by a paper clip from a leaking hot air balloon over the Grand Canyon in order to feel what I feel standing on the third step of a stepladder trying to put millet in the bird feeder.

You make concessions when you're married a long time that you don't believe you'll ever make when you're beginning. You say to yourself when you're young, oh, I wouldn't tolerate this or that or the other thing, you say love is the most important thing in the world and there's only one kind of love and it makes you feel different than you feel the rest of the time, like you're all lit up. But time goes by and you've slept together a thousand nights and smelled like spit-up when babies are sick and seen your body droop and get soft. And some nights you say to yourself, it's not enough, I won't put up with another minute. And then the next morning you wake up and the kitchen smells like coffee and the children have their hair all brushed and the birds are eating out of the feeder and you look at your husband and he's not the person you used to think he was but he's your life. The house and the children and so much more of what you do is built around him and your life, too, your history. If you take him out it's like cutting his face out of all the pictures, there's a big hole and it's ugly. It would ruin everything. It's more than love, it's more important than love... It's hard. And it's hard to understand unless you're in it. And it's hard for you to understand now because of where you are and what you're feeling. But I wanted to say it...because I won't be able to say it when I need to, when it's one of those nights and you're locking the front door because of foolishness about romance, about how things are supposed to be. You can be hard, and you can be judgmental, and with those two things alone you can make a mess of your life the likes of which you won't believe. It's so much easier...the being happy. It's so much easier, to learn to love what you have instead of yearning always for what you're missing, or what you imagine you're missing. It's so much more peaceful.

the birds scratch the seed out of the feeder, then fly down to the deck to eat the seed. They know there’s a cat, but still they go down to pick at the seed. When you think about it, people are often like this, too.

Sometimes I wonder what is happening to their brains, the way our devices are making us all ADD. We're like birds pecking at a feeder for the next fix of seed...

1 The summer our marriage failed we picked sage to sweeten our hot dark car. We sat in the yard with heavy glasses of iced tea, talking about which seeds to sow when the soil was cool. Praising our large, smooth spinach leaves, free this year of Fusarium wilt, downy mildew, blue mold. And then we spoke of flowers, and there was a joke, you said, about old florists who were forced to make other arrangements. Delphiniums flared along the back fence. All summer it hurt to look at you. 2 I heard a woman on the bus say, “He and I were going in different directions.” As if it had something to do with a latitude or a pole. Trying to write down how love empties itself from a house, how a view changes, how the sign for infinity turns into a noose for a couple. Trying to say that weather weighed down all the streets we traveled on, that if gravel sinks, it keeps sinking. How can I blame you who kneeled day after day in wet soil, pulling slugs from the seedlings? You who built a ten-foot arch for the beans, who hated a bird feeder left unfilled. You who gave carrots to a gang of girls on bicycles. 3 On our last trip we drove through rain to a town lit with vacancies. We’d come to watch whales. At the dock we met five other couples—all of us fluorescent, waterproof, ready for the pitch and frequency of the motor that would lure these great mammals near. The boat chugged forward—trailing a long, creamy wake. The captain spoke from a loudspeaker: In winter gray whales love Laguna Guerrero; it’s warm and calm, no killer whales gulp down their calves. Today we’ll see them on their way to Alaska. If we get close enough, observe their eyes—they’re bigger than baseballs, but can only look down. Whales can communicate at a distance of 300 miles—but it’s my guess they’re all saying, Can you hear me? His laughter crackled. When he told us Pink Floyd is slang for a whale’s two-foot penis, I stopped listening. The boat rocked, and for two hours our eyes were lost in the waves—but no whales surfaced, blowing or breaching or expelling water through baleen plates. Again and again you patiently wiped the spray from your glasses. We smiled to each other, good troopers used to disappointment. On the way back you pointed at cormorants riding the waves— you knew them by name: the Brants, the Pelagic, the double-breasted. I only said, I’m sure whales were swimming under us by the dozens. 4 Trying to write that I loved the work of an argument, the exhaustion of forgiving, the next morning, washing our handprints off the wineglasses. How I loved sitting with our friends under the plum trees, in the white wire chairs, at the glass table. How you stood by the grill, delicately broiling the fish. How the dill grew tall by the window. Trying to explain how camellias spoil and bloom at the same time, how their perfume makes lovers ache. Trying to describe the ways sex darkens and dies, how two bodies can lie together, entwined, out of habit. Finding themselves later, tired, by a fire, on an old couch that no longer reassures. The night we eloped we drove to the rainforest and found ourselves in fog so thick our lights were useless. There’s no choice, you said, we must have faith in our blindness. How I believed you. Trying to imagine the road beneath us, we inched forward, honking, gently, again and again.

The Native Americans, whose wisdom Thoreau admired, regarded the Earth itself as a sacred source of energy. To stretch out on it brought repose, to sit on the ground ensured greater wisdom in councils, to walk in contact with its gravity gave strength and endurance. The Earth was an inexhaustible well of strength: because it was the original Mother, the feeder, but also because it enclosed in its bosom all the dead ancestors. It was the element in which transmission took place. Thus, instead of stretching their hands skyward to implore the mercy of celestial divinities, American Indians preferred to walk barefoot on the Earth: The Lakota was a true Naturist – a lover of Nature. He loved the earth and all things of the earth, the attachment growing with age. The old people came literally to love the soil and they sat or reclined on the ground with a feeling of being close to a mothering power. It was good for the skin to touch the earth and the old people liked to remove their moccasins and walk with bare feet on the sacred earth. Their tipis were built upon the earth and their altars were made of earth. The birds that flew in the air came to rest on the earth and it was the final abiding place of all things that lived and grew. The soil was soothing, strengthening, cleansing and healing. That is why the old Indian still sits upon the earth instead of propping himself up and away from its life-giving forces. For him, to sit or lie upon the ground is to be able to think more deeply and to feel more keenly; he can see more clearly into the mysteries of life and come closer in kinship to other lives about him. Walking, by virtue of having the earth’s support, feeling its gravity, resting on it with every step, is very like a continuous breathing in of energy. But the earth’s force is not transmitted only in the manner of a radiation climbing through the legs. It is also through the coincidence of circulations: walking is movement, the heart beats more strongly, with a more ample beat, the blood circulates faster and more powerfully than when the body is at rest. And the earth’s rhythms draw that along, they echo and respond to each other. A last source of energy, after the heart and the Earth, is landscapes. They summon the walker and make him at home: the hills, the colours, the trees all confirm it. The charm of a twisting path among hills, the beauty of vine fields in autumn, like purple and gold scarves, the silvery glitter of olive leaves against a defining summer sky, the immensity of perfectly sliced glaciers … all these things support, transport and nourish us.

During daylight hours, they (Anna's Hummingbirds) feed every 15 minutes, be it tiny insects or nectar from flowers or feeders. If they don't consume food often enough, they can die during the day. If they have not eaten enough before nightfall, they can die while asleep as they hang in suspended animation with tiny feet clutched to a thin branch.

For, rather than thinking of his death, I will be thinking of the story of his death, so much so that after his funeral Amy will ask, "Did I see you taking notes during the service?" There'll be no surprise in her voice. Rather, it will be the way you might playfully scold a squirrel: "Did you just jump up from the deck and completely empty that bird feeder?" The squirrel and me—it's in our nature, though maybe not forever. For our natures, I have just recently learned from my father, can change. Or maybe they're simply revealed, and the dear, cheerful man I saw that afternoon at Springmoor was there all along, smothered in layers of rage and impatience that burned away as he blazed into the homestretch.

I must say that I have rarely seen a community come together in order to meet a common need in a manner as beautiful as that of a handful of birds at a feeder.

Whatever was on your shopping list—linseed oil, two-inch masonry nails, coal scuttle, small can of Brasso metal polish—Mr. Morley had it. I am sure if you said to him, “I need 125 yards of razor wire, a ship’s anchor, and a dominatrix outfit in a size eight,” he would find them for you after rooting around for a few minutes among bird feeders and bags of bone meal. Mr.

It’s like the idiots who figure that hummingbirds worry about their weight or tooth decay or some such nonsense, maybe they just want to spare hummingbirds the evils of sugar,’ explained Wednesday. ‘So they fill the hummingbird feeders with fucking NutraSweet. The birds come to the feeders and they drink it. Then they die, because their food contains no calories even though their little tummies are full.

The (Anna's Hummingbird) males are deadbeat dads that contribute nothing to making the nest, or to feeding either the female or the nestlings. They are off to find other females they can impress with their deep dives, chasing skills, and commandeering of feeders.

It's like the idiots who figure that hummingbirds worry about their weight or tooth decay or some such nonsense, maybe they just want to spare hummingbirds the evils of sugar," explained Wednesday. "So they fill the hummingbird feeders with fucking NutraSweet. The birds come to the feeders and they drink it. Then they die, because their food contains no calories even though their little tummies are full. That's Paul Bunyan for you. Nobody ever told Paul Bunyan stories. Nobody ever believed in Paul Bunyan. He came staggering out of a New York ad agency in 1910 and filled the nation's myth stomach with empty calories.

A woman I know gave me a build-it-yourself bird-feeder kit for Christmas, so I built it, and hung it from the eve of my roof high enough to keep the birds save from my cat. But the birds scratch the seed out of the feeder, then fly down to the deck and eat the seed. They know there's a cat, but still they go down to pick at the seed. When you think about it, people are often like this, too.

When she started back she saw a blue jay perched atop the feeder. She stopped dead and held her breath. It stood large and polished and looked royally remote from the other birds busy feeding and she could nearly believe she'd never seen a jay before. It stood enormous, looking in at her, seeing whatever it saw, and she wanted to tell Rey to look up. She watched it, black-barred across the wings and tail, and she thought she'd somehow only now learned how to look. She'd never seen a thing so clearly and it was not simply because the jay was posted where it was, close enough for her to note the details of cresting and color. There was also the clean shock of its appearance among the smaller brownish birds, its mineral blue and muted blue and broad dark neckband. But if Rey looked up, the bird would fly.

Even the garden birds that we watch with pleasure at our bird-feeders are in a state of conflict: safety or hunger. When the weather is at its worst, more and more birds throng to the table, because the alternative to facing their fear is starvation. It is easy to sentimentalize nature, to forget that the prevailing forces at work – besides the urge to hold a territory and find a mate – are hunger and fear.

Dottie: I miss being across the hall from you. Jason: Words I never thought you’d say. Dottie: I know, I surprised myself, but despite your annoying tendencies and non-stop chattering, I miss it. Jason: You’re making my heart soar like a fucking falcon. A goddamn FALCON, Dottie. Dottie: Falcon. That’s pretty serious. Do you know what would have been more serious? An albatross. Jason: Pfft, no way. They might have a ten-foot wingspan, but they’re seabirds, so they shit in the ocean. Where’s the fun in that? Dottie: As opposed to . . . Jason: Shitting on people’s heads, of course. If I was a bird, that would be my main purpose in life, shitting on unsuspecting people’s heads. Think about it, being targeted by a bird bowel movement is detrimental as a human being. You’re just going about your normal business when all of a sudden, WHACK, white goop drips from your forehead down your cheek. What is that, you think? You carefully touch it, your fingers immediately wet with semi-warm liquid. And when you realize it’s an anal secretion from a flying vertebrate, all hell breaks loose. The horror! The disgust! The SHAME OF BEING SHIT ON. There’s no coming back from that. #DayRuined And as the maniacal bird, there you are, floating around in the peaceful skies, watching idiot humans running around in circles, trying to get rid of the poo-poo. With one flip of the feather—or the bird, hey-o—you’re off to the bird feeder, filling up so you can drop turd once again. A vicious cycle of humans feeding birds only to get shit on unsuspectedly, I AM HERE FOR THAT! Dottie: I was wrong. I don’t have to be across the hall to be annoyed by you.

On harsh, frigid January days, when the winds are relentless and the snow piles up around us, I often think of our small feathered friends back on the Third Line. I wonder if the old feeder is still standing in the orchard and if anyone thinks to put out a few crumbs and some bacon drippings for our beautiful, hungry, winter birds. In the stark, white landscape they provided a welcome splash of colour and their songs gave us hope through the long, silent winter.

I asked Bernd Heinrich if he knew why feeder birds, like finches, discard so many seeds. It turns out he and other scientiests did research on this back in the 1990s - of course, he did -measuring discarded seeds with painstaking accuracy. The short answer: Songbirds prefer shorter, fatter unshelled sunflower seeds, more depth than length, because they contain more oil. They take half a second to judge the seeds, dropping the low-density ones, until they find a seed to their liking.

I love the wild things, and the birds most of all. My education began, I am sure, the moment I was pushed free of the womb by Mother, born on Prade Ranch in the back bedroom on a late afternoon in early March-the seventh of March which is when the golden-cheeked warblers usually return to Prade Ranch after wintering down in Mexico. There would have been doves calling, as if to counter Mother's gasps and cries, and the flylike buzz of the hummingbirds (the aggressive black-chinned ones making most of the racket) at the nectar feeders just outside the open window. There would have been a breeze stirring the lace curtains. Father in the room with the doctor, and Grandfather and Chubb on the back porch, waiting for this next new part of the world to begin. Grandfather said he knew that was going to be the day, not just because of the golden-cheeked warblers' return, but because he'd heard a vermilion flycatcher buzzing-pit-zee,pit-zee-all the day before, and on into the night, well past midnight-the only time he's ever heard of that, before or since.

In 1968, at fifteen, she turned on the television and watched chaos flaring up across the country like brush fires. Martin Luther King, Jr., then Bobby Kennedy. Students in revolt at Columbia. Riots in Chicago, Memphis, Baltimore, D.C.—everywhere, everywhere, things were falling apart. Deep inside her a spark kindled, a spark that would flare in Izzy years later. Of course she understood why this was happening: they were fighting to right injustices. But part of her shuddered at the scenes on the television screen. Grainy scenes, but no less terrifying: grocery stores ablaze, smoke billowing from their rooftops, walls gnawed to studs by flame. The jagged edges of smashed windows like fangs in the night. Soldiers marching with rifles past drugstores and Laundromats. Jeeps blocking intersections under dead traffic lights. Did you have to burn down the old to make way for the new? The carpet at her feet was soft. The sofa beneath her was patterned with roses. Outside, a mourning dove cooed from the bird feeder and a Cadillac glided to a dignified stop at the corner. She wondered which was the real world.

Lily likes to feed the birds outside our house. She has two feeders in the backyard, which she hangs from hooks close to the trees and fills with seeds. She loves to stand at the back window and watch them. Even in the dead of winter, when the birds should have flown somewhere south, where it’s warm, I wake up to the sound of birdsong. The birds come in droves, and because of it, despite Lily’s best efforts, she can’t always keep up with feeding them. Eventually the feeders go dry and the birds disappear, and then the backyard becomes quiet and still. Days pass without seeing a bird so that you’d think they were long gone. Lily goes to the store. She gets more seed. She trudges outside, sometimes in the cold, sometimes through a foot of snow, to fill the feeders.

If a ship landed in my yard and LGMs stepped out, I’d push past their literature and try to find the cable that dropped the saucer on my roses. Lack of a cable or any significant burning to the flowers, I’d then grab a hammer and start knocking about in the ship till I was convinced that nothing said “Intel Inside.” Then when I discovered a “Flux Capacitor” type thing I would finally stop and say, “Hey, cool gadget!” Assuming the universal benevolence of the LGMs, I’d yank it out and demand from the nearest "Grey” (they are the tall nice ones), “where the hell did this come from?” Greys don’t talk, they communicate via telepathy, so I’d ignore the voice inside my head. Then stepping outside the saucer and sitting in a lawn chair, I’d throw pebbles at the aliens till I was sure they were solid. Then I’d look down at the “Flux Capacitor” and make sure it hadn’t morphed into my bird feeder. Finally, with proof in my hand and aliens sitting on my deck (they’d be offered beers, though I’ve heard that they absorb energy like a plant) I’d grab my cell phone and tell my doctor that I’m having a serious manic episode with full-blown visual hallucinations.

As they get closer to the castle, Beatrice says, “Oh, my, it’s even lovelier up close.” And it is. It’s hard for Amy to keep her eyes on the road. The tremendous white wall on her left is covered with dark green ivy. Blue flowers are interspersed with the leaves. “Yes,” says Loki. “You have to hand it to the elves, they can make even man-eating plants picturesque.” “Man-eating?” says Beatrice. “Let’s say you wouldn’t want to try and scale the wall by climbing the ivy,” says Loki. “Oh,” says Beatrice. “It is so pretty, though...I wonder if it would keep the squirrels away from the bird feeder outside our kitchen window?” “Grandma!” says Amy. “It’s difficult to get clippings of the stuff,” says Loki. “It bites.

Heavy silence, the kind weighted down by unspoken judgment, consumed the car. In the trees near the church, she noticed a black-headed grosbeak eating from a bird feeder, acting as if the world hadn’t been indelibly altered.

We have a bird feeder out there that every squirrel in the forest is trying to infiltrate, which drives Dad crazy.

Got a lot to do this morning.” “Like driving around St. Dennis filling bird feeders?” “Just these. Everyone else can fill their own.

Somewhere in my distant memories, I used to be so busy that I longed for a pause button for my life. To freeze the whole world for an hour, or an afternoon: that was my favourite daydream. To stroll across green grass, admire the butterflies stopped in midair, stroke the soft feathers of birds at the feeder. To maybe lie down and take a nap in the sunshine and know that absolutely nothing needed to get done. No deadlines ticking closer. No obligations crowding in. But deadlines don't worry me anymore. Neither do aches and pains. Minor problems like that can't begin to touch the agony I'm in. I lie as still as I can to keep the thoughts and memories from finding me, but sick misery clings to me anyway, as close as a second skin.

The garden is incredible. It's really overgrown, but underneath the brambles all kinds of plants have survived. There are paths, garden seats, bird feeders." "Like Sleeping Beauty, fast asleep until the enchantment is broken." "That's the thing, though; it hasn't been asleep. The trees kept growing, bearing fruit, even though there's been no one there to appreciate it. You should see the apple tree, it looks to be a hundred years old.

Cowardice of this degree is, I know, uncommon. Many people would have to hang by their teeth from a frayed cord suspended by a paper clip from a leaking hot air balloon over the Grand Canyon in order to feel what I feel standing on the third step of a stepladder trying to put millet in the bird feeder.

You should at least wear a life jacket," she scolded. "If I do go over and watch my boat sail off into the sunset," I told her, "I don't relish the idea of hanging about for several days while my flesh is slowly picked by fish, like some kind of oceanic bird feeder.

Raccoons are a common nuisance animal in the United States. Often, they will find their way into our homes and yards, rummaging through garbage cans or raiding bird feeders. If you have ever had a raccoon issue, you know how pesky and destructive they can be!

But part of her shuddered at the scenes on the television screen. Grainy scenes, but no less terrifying: grocery stores ablaze, smoke billowing from their rooftops, walls gnawed to studs by flame. The jagged edges of smashed windows like fangs in the night. Soldiers marching with rifles past drugstores and Laundromats. Jeeps blocking intersections under dead traffic lights. Did you have to burn down the old to make way for the new? The carpet at her feet was soft. The sofa beneath her was patterned with roses. Outside, a mourning dove cooed from the bird feeder and a Cadillac glided to a dignified stop at the corner. She wondered which was the real world.

A bird feeder hung from the porch roof, but there were no seeds in it. The curtains in all the windows were closed.

Hello, Miss Emmie.” Bothwell smiled back at her, and to the earl’s watchful eye, there was just a bit too much longing and wistfulness in that smile. When the vicar brushed a kiss on the lady’s cheek, St. Just would have rolled his eyes, except Winnie was watching him too closely. Winnie rolled her eyes though, and that restored his humor. “Hullo, Miss Winnie.” The earl swung her up onto his shoulders. “You are the lookout, so spy me some of these cheese breads.” “Over there.” Winnie pointed. “On the bench near the lemonade.” The earl ambled over and bent at the knees to retrieve one. “Hold my gloves.” He held both hands up for Winnie to whisk off his gloves. “On second thought, you need to eat, too. I can barely tell you’re up there. Toss the gloves to the bench.” She complied and accepted a small, golden brown roll. As she munched, crumbs fell to the earl’s hair. “These are good,” the earl pronounced, taking a bite of his own cheese bread. “Aren’t you going to have one, Miss Farnum?” “I believe I will,” Emmie replied, avoiding his eyes. “Vicar?” “But of course.” “Lock your elbows, Winnie.” St. Just hefted her up and over his head, then set her on the ground. “You have crumbs in your hair,” Winnie said around a mouthful of bread. “I am starting the latest rage in bird feeders. May I have some lemonade, Miss Farnum?” “You may, but bend down.” He complied, bending his head so she could swat at his hair. Except she didn’t swat; she winnowed her fingers through his hair and sifted slowly, repeating the maneuver several times. The earl was left staring at her décolletage and inhaling the fresh, flowery scent wafting from her cleavage. “Now you are disheveled but no longer attractive to wildlife.” “Pity,” he murmured as he accepted a glass.

Jonathan shuddered. There were birds in his head now, as if escaping from the empty feeders above their heads. Ghost birds. Fluttering around inside his skull, and he could not get them out. Yet still he went on, wanting to burst through the nettle and tall trees, find a copse and feel the sunlight on his face. It was getting colder and colder in the haunted mansion.

All this impressive physiology produces more than mere flight. The hawk dances on air. In just ten seconds, she stopped a rapid dive, rose vertically while turning, swept in a new direction, flapped upward, and curved into a rising arc, ending with a stall that parked her feet directly over a maple branch. The precision and beauty of bird flight is so familiar that our wonder is jaded. We should be frozen in amazement at the cardinal landing on the feeder or the sparrow banking around cars in a parking lot. Instead, we walk by as if an animal pirouetting on air were unremarkable, even mundane. The hawk's dramatic rise over the mandala's center jolts me out of dullness, pulling away the blinding layers of familiarity.

Suddenly and unexpectedly the birds descended on the feeder in droves. Thirty minutes later, the snow began. And I thought that to anticipate something is far better than to fall prey to it.

A hefty, hooked beak and scary stare can be fierce features! The shoebill...is one mean feeder. It eats almost anything in the swamp.

During mornings in front of the bird feeder, Tim eventually distilled his reflections down to a statement of “Team Expectations,” which he calls “the Three Cs—Character, Classroom, and Competitor.” “It’s a statement of principles, not rules. It’s an aspirational tool, not a corrective tool. It’s meant to create a culture. You need to share your vision as a leader, and get your people engaged in it.” The order of Tim’s Cs reflects his priorities as a leader. “Character” includes things like “treat everyone with respect,” “set good examples for others,” and “do what you say you will do.” “Classroom” includes “attend all classes” and “communicate with your

Birds that are startled frequently try to take off and fly toward what looks like open space, which is often how they end up hitting windows. If the window is close enough, the bird won’t have time to get up enough speed to injure itself too badly, which is why the Audubon Society recommends that if you can’t put bird feeders more than 10 meters away from your window, you should put them closer than 1 meter.

And I have known days when the temperature would not rise above zero, when snow would be deep, ice on the river, the north wind rattling the branches. Then this house is a little cell of warmth, a cold brilliance coming in at the windows, a good fire in the drumstove, a pot of bean soup simmering, the dog asleep on the floor. Nobody comes, only the birds to the suet feeders. And I have nothing to do but read and watch. I seem to be in a room in the wind. I talk to the dog, who raises her head to listen and then goes back to sleep.

If I say your name now and you turn your head and you do not recognize me then fuck, I don’t know. Then I am dreaming of you dreaming of me, again. Then I’ll wait here till you’re ready and while I’m waiting I’ll make my home here, in this undefinable space I can try to name and then try to name again until I give up on names altogether, just let them go through my fingers like water, like trying to remember the freakiest moments of a nightmare, but it’s too late—I’m already awake and the day is about to start and I have to set up a bird feeder and propagate more plants today. I have to hang up signs. I have to open up the windows. I have to look far out to see that line where the water becomes air

Al had sat in the muddied trenches of World War I and had watched the butchery of war massacre every living thing around it. Yet, all those years later he would rather talk about building bee hives, scattered his yard with every type of bird feeder imaginable, and planting flowerbeds deluged with irrepressible color. And it wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized that he wasn’t somehow avoiding the images of horror that occur when men set out to slaughter one another in battle. Rather, he courageously embraced those images and he committed his life to doing something completely opposite of what those images had done to him. And because he did, Al won his war and he taught me how to win mine.

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT this statement? “A backyard bird feeder will help take the stress out of your life.” A friend of mine uses that line to promote her birding shop in Barnegat, New Jersey. It’s warm, appealing, and will, with luck, help her turn a lot of people on to birding. However, with no offense to my friend, stress-free bird feeding falls into the same category as painless dentistry.

I don’t know why they had to add that big ass TV,” Lorrie complained under his breath and Cace elbowed him. “Arizona was in the playoffs,” he reminded him. Lorrie rolled his eyes and held up his hands. “Arizona’s full of hummingbirds but I don’t see a big bird feeder,” he replied.

Bodega Bay was the same harbor where Alfred Hitchcock had filmed his 1963 horror classic, The Birds, the movie that made the world think twice about backyard feeders. Hitchcock knew the worst shocks came from the mundane, and few creatures were as widespread, and as taken for granted, as birds. So the great director had western gulls dive-bombing children at an outdoor birthday party, raspberry-dipped house finches pouring into a living room through the fireplace, and American crows slashing at Tippi Hed-ren while she cowered in a bedroom. Suffice to say, The Birds was not a popular movie with birders on board this tour boat. After lifetimes of weekends in the field, they knew birds didn’t attack humans. The only way Hitchcock had got ravens to chase actors was to sprinkle their hair with seed. Crows lurked on the gutters of the old schoolhouse because he affixed magnets to their feet. Children fleeing swarms of blackbirds in the movie were actually running on a studio treadmill with birds tied to their necks. It all seemed silly to Levantin. The only menacing thing birds ever did to him was poop on his patio.

Tips to increases egg production in layer: Introduce birds to a new environment once or twice a week before laying. You should increase the amount of feed in the diet of birds. Ensure proper feeder design. The feed should be formulated in such a way that it is rich in calcium and proteins. You should follow strict biosecurity measures.